Although I'm only 36 I've been hunting, running, skiing, etc for a very long time and enjoy the flexibility with my job to really not work very often. I've found some strange stuff but interesting stuff, all in MT. Lots of arrowheads all over central and eastern MT, along with lots of different fossils on the front and throughout eastern MT. One antelope trip a lone bull bison was on the loose north of Miles City. It had no ear tags nor any known report of it missing from a game farm, so the landowner was allowed to kill the bison on the spot. Still don't know exactly where it came from. We helped him obtain the animal and skin it in his barn whilst on a front end loader. I'd never been on a bison kill so it was interesting. I've found a number of complex, and quite stout forts and little structures throughout the Bob Marshall, some even with functioning steel stoves someone had packed in. Some of these were way up high, and a long ways in. I'm sure they were hunting mule deer. One in the Lee Metcalf, about 30 minutes before I killed a big 5 point with my bow, I found a log lean to over 80 feet long, 20 feet wide, and 20 feet tall. Glass cookware and old camping gear were left over at that one. I've got photos of some of them. Found wolf pups on top of a prominent ridge in southwest MT that appeared to be about two weeks old. They played right near me while I rested on a long run. They were in pretty good shape but no mother around, from what I could tell. Airplane wreckage from a very old crash in the Highwoods, and an old weather balloon nearly at the top of the Snowcrest. An abandoned raft and frame in the Sluiceboxes while looking for a big deer, after a big run off year. It was buried under maybe 20 feet of logs and branches. Never found an accident report for the raft. Found an entire camp on top of the Snowcrest horse packers abandoned. The tent was in threads, and all their food and cookware was left rotting. I took what was left of their straps, cookware, and other salvageable gear. Found one ski with a mounted touring binder on a bow hunt in a big avalanche chute while stalking a big deer. In a remote part of the breaks with very limited access I was stalking a big deer, and dropped way down into a nasty coulee to try another angle. Way down was a 100 yard valley, and dug into the mud bank was a broken glass, wood frame window mounted into the mud to look out from what looked like a dug out room. It was badly eroded from the inside-out, with nails and tools in the outwash. There was what looked like a very old well further down the wash. I suppose someone lived there during the 20's or 30's. Pretty crazy. The landowner didn't know it was there. Near Lincoln on a bow hunt I returned to my vehicle early one day during a heavy rain but was one gulch south. An S-10 pickup was left there with the engine running and door wide open. I didn't see anyone around, and it took me about 20 minutes to get down to the road near the vehicle and no one showed up. When I realized where I was I started working toward my truck. I got to mine and there were Sheriff Deputies cruising the forest road. Apparently an inmate from Great Falls (I think) escaped the jail, and had abandoned the vehicle, so he was somewhere in the immediate area. I have access to a cabin there so I was worried he'd eventually show up at the cabin, where I stayed for two more nights. A deputy stayed at the stolen vehicle the whole time and the escapee never returned. I don't know what happened to him. One area near Helena I was scouting for elk while running and found 3 refridgerators along an old decommissioned road about 1 mile apart. There were falling-over outhouses there as well, so I assume they were old camps but I don't know why the fridges were there. The coolest, though, was during late August on a two day run on the Front I crossed a massive, super gnarly limestone canyon. On the far side at the rim of the canyon I followed a game trail and happened by pictographs written in an overhanging cave. I looked closely and found some arrowheads and what I think were arrows (or the beginnings of them?) tucked up on a ledge. There were some bats so some of it was covered in guano and such, that pretty much held them there. I later checked the topo and there was a label for an Indian burial ground relatively closeby, and I had heard of a group of Metis that lived in the area up until the 1920's. Maybe something left over from them.
